Sophistry and oversimplification
Reconciling History: A Story of Canada
by Jody Wilson-Raybould and Roshan Danesh
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2024
$39.95 / 9780771017230
Reviewed by Richard Butler
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Jody Wilson-Raybould’s most recent book, co-authored with Roshan Danesh, will doubtless receive any number of favourable reviews.
The following offers an opinion to the contrary.
To me, the first two-thirds of this book feels deeply unreliable. The authors manipulate history. They string together series of quotations from different speakers, decades and continents or oceans apart. The authors make it seem like those quotations constitute an expression of seamless government policy. All the quotations are made without context. Many are quoted only in part. There does not seem to be a consistent chronological order.
One example is the infamous statement by Duncan Campbell Scott about continuing “until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question and no Indian Department ….”
That quotation is offered as a reflection of assimilative policy “[i]n the early years after Confederation.”
In fact, those words come from Scott’s submissions in 1920 to a special Parliamentary Committee concerning the mandatory enfranchisement of those Indians who had shown themselves willing and able to live off reserve. Scott thought their continuing status under the Indian Act would deter others who might voluntarily join the body politic. His abiding policy objective was to save the Department money. The amendment passed, but was reversed two years later.
Another problem with the first two-thirds of the book is that some purported facts are advanced by innuendo; and there are others more baldly stated which, to my certain knowledge, are just plain wrong. For instance, the Indian Act (1876) is said to contain provisions which are simply not there.
This part of the book is evidently a cut-and-paste job largely based on someone else’s research. Granted, the research is handy to have in one place, fully footnoted, and many of the quoted passages make for compelling reading. However, the book shows how snippets of what was actually said can be selected a century or so later to advance a pastiche narrative.
The final third of the book is likewise dominated by snippets. These are seemingly intended to reflect back upon the earlier narrative, showing how the government has finally recognized and apologized for past harms and the Indigenous historical vision and position is finally being vindicated. This too seems to be oversimplified.
In sum, in my respectful view, too much of this book is little more than a handy compendium of familiar sources strung together to prove a point. It is reminiscent of the approach taken in Grave Error, whereby those authors seek to advance a counter-narrative. To be ruthless about it, both books carry more than a whiff of sophistry. I lament that our discussion of historical truths for the supposed purpose of reconciliation should have come to this.
There are, however, a number of places in the book where Ms. Wilson-Raybould actually speaks for herself. The most powerful of these are at the start of the chapter entitled “Wolf” and the whole of the closing chapter entitled “Ki’mola (Many Walking Together).”
Those passages are well worth going to the library to sit down and read. Any Canadian who cares about the hows and whys of reconciliation should make the time to do so.
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Richard Butler lives on the traditional territory of the lekwungen-speaking Peoples, a retired lawyer and sometime law professor, and more recently a writer on various Indigenous subjects. He is the author of Taking Reconciliation Personally, I Dare Say… Conversations with Indigeneity, and the recent title What Is This? Who Am I?: Culturally Informed Appreciation of Coastal Peoples’ Artworks, published through A & R Publishing. [Editor’s Note: Richard Butler wrote the essay An Exercise in Futility and has recently reviewed the films Sugarcane & Racing to keep our language alive: H̓ágṃ́ṇtxv Qṇtxv Tx̌ (We’re all we got) and books by Marianne Ignace and Ronald E. Ignace, Philip Seagram, Val Napoleon, Rebecca Johnson, Richard Overstall and Debra McKenzie (eds.), Angela Cameron, Sari Graben and Val Napoleon (eds.), and Adam Jones for The British Columbia Review.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster